PADANIA
The Foundations of a Nation
Chapter 1 Reclaiming Our History
The Italian State, the Padanian Nation
The Italian unitary centralists have always, and at all costs, exploited the
ambiguous identity between the Nation and the State. In reality, they were
concerned and are concerned only with the State, or more precisely, the
semblance of the State apparatus used and exploited by the several political
regimes which have succeeded one another in ruling this territory in the last
135 years with hardly any sense of the common interest.
The real protagonists of history, the People, have nothing to do with the
foregoing concept of Nation which is merely another way of defining the State.
If we accept that a State corresponds to a Nation, and to a Nation,
automatically, a People, this means that historical identities and territories
within the State which are different from the official one cannot be recognized
and must even be repressed. A partial exception is made for a few communities
which are blessed with the good fortune of sharing their language with the
people of some, possibly more powerful, State.
This aspect of the modern State is conceived of as the awful beast reproduced in
the "Leviathan" model from the treatise of the British philosopher
Hobbes. This is a State which often defines itself as the "fatherland".
Italian officialdom professes to teach us Padanians that we should regard
ourselves mentally and emotionally closer to the inhabitants of the sothernmost
islets off Sicily, than to, say, those of neighbouring Southern Switzerland,
sharing the same mood of speech with Lombardy. How can we build a Europe of the
Peoples on such an artificial basis?
In contrast to the Italian State which for 135 years has attempted in vain to
define itself as a Nation, Padania represents a potential Nation in historical
and cultural terms based on shared feelings and social and economic interests,
though still subject to an arrogant colonial repression which by now has become
intolerable.
Padania has always been part of Europe
For more than nineteen centuries of its approximately twenty-five century
history, Padania has been closely tied to the rest of continental Europe.
From the Sixth to the Eighth centuries, it was united under the Lombard Kingdom,
and from the High Middle Ages to nearly the beginning of the Nineteenth Century,
it was part of the Germanic Empire and the glorious Republic of Venice. In
contrast, Padania was under Roman government for only six centuries: in
antiquity, from around 200 B.C., when the Celtic populations were conquered and
subjugated, until around 285 A.D., when Milan became the capital of the Western
Empire; and from 1870 until today.
In the Low Middle Ages, Padania became the focal point of the rise of the Free
Communes, spearheading a movement which liberated new social forces in Europe
from the restrictions and privileges of the old feudal order. This movement,
along with the religious and social stirrings which were the main features of
medieval city life in the territories of Padania and Tuscany, remained separate
from the regions of South Italy. This was a major factor in the development of
profound differences in civil life and social organization between the regions
comprising the present-day Italian State. The effects of these differences are
clearly illustrated in the study of Harvard University professor Robert Putnam.*
These were the years (1167) of the first Lombard League, a free association of
Communes not only of the present-day Lombardia, but also of other areas of
Padania. The League scored an important victory at Legnano over the Germanic
Emperor in 1176. This was a historical battle not so much for the number of
armed men who took part in it, or for its military result, but because it marked
the rise of the modern citizens' militia, the victory of free citizen soldiers
over feudal armies.
Padania was one of the European centers, in addition to Flanders and the
Hanseatic League, which gave rise to the Free and Autonomous Communes. And not
by chance, in the Late Middle Ages and at the beginning of the Modern Era, these
centers reached the heights not only of industry, commerce, and finance, but
also of culture, indeed, of Western civilization.
Chapter 2 Reclaiming Our Geography
Geographical fraud
Official scholastic and non-scholastic texts of the Italian State claim that
"Italy is a perfectly defined natural geographical region", thus
rendering perfect homage to the cult of "the sacred national borders"
typical of nineteenth-century- style nation-statism. It is evident that this
"naturalness" is evoked to attribute a legitimacy and a sacredness to
political and historical constructions in an attempt to juxtapose the distinct
physical, natural sphere onto historical, human events. It is a thinly veiled
attempt to instill the idea that the "Nation-State" is eternally
defined by nature itself. The would-be Italian nation-State is panned off as
coinciding with the physical peninsular region rigidly separated from the rest
of Europe by the Alpine mountain chain.
The habit of employing the term "Peninsula" as a synonym for the
territory of the Italian State is as wide-spread as it is erroneous. A simple
look at the map reveals that of the 300,000 square kilometers of Italian State
territory, only 130,000 are peninsular. The islands comprise more than 50,000
square kilometers, while the remaining 120,000 are clearly part of the European
continental land mass. In spite of those who would like to deny the evidence,
Padania's geographical position in the center of Europe has made it a strategic
area for communications, and also for warfare. In fact, from the Sixteenth to
the Nineteenth centuries, Padania shared with Flanders the unenviable destiny of
being the theater of conflict between the major European powers.
When we hear people talk about the "northern part of the Italian peninsula"
in reference to the Alpine-Padanian regions, we must object to the
incontrovertible abuse of this expression. This expression more accurately
refers to Tuscany, the Marche, and Umbria.
The Alps: barrier or pivot-point
Communications across the Alps have always been an integral part of active and
continuous commercial and cultural exchanges both locally and as a pivot-point
in a vaster network linking the Mediterranean world with northern Europe.
Throughout the Middle Ages, pilgrims heading towards Rome or to other centers of
Christendom, repeatedly crossed the Alps as did merchants and travelers. For
centuries, transalpine communications have been more active than those between
Padania and the peninsula.
Even in the first years after the formation of the Italian State (1860-xxxx),
road links with central Europe were more numerous and in better condition than
those with Rome. Furthermore, major rail connections were constructed through
the Alps before those running through the Apennine mountains. To this day, Rome
has not found the time, from 1991 to 1996, to ratify the Convention of the Alps,
an international agreement for the development of transalpine transportation and
the protection of the mountain environment.
To debunk the "ethnic barrier" myth, it is enough to observe that, as
a rule, populations sharing the same languages occupy both sides of the Alpine
watershed. Going west to east, we find: the Occitans, the Harpitans (French-Provençe),
the Walser, the Romansch-Ladins, the Baiuvars; and the Slovenes. In antiquity,
the Rhetians and the Ligurians had settlements on both sides of the Alps.
Chapter 3 The Padanians Rise to Consciousness
Beyond the ethnic majority-minority issue
The embarrassment with which the issue of "independentism" is faced,
accompanied by the awareness of the artificial nature of the centralist Italian
political structure and its internal weaknesses and contradictions, hides the
insecurity of a system which cannot place Padania in the more reassuring
category of "ethnic and linguistic minority" used to describe "traditional"
claims for autonomy in more "peripheral" areas.
With the extension of recognition of groups which do not consider themselves of
"foreign" cultures and languages and the implementation of concrete
measures for their linguistic protection, official Italian ideology goes into
crisis. The Italian State has always tried to link any form of protection which
it has begrudgingly conceded with a sort of classification of these minorities
as "extraneous bodies".
Linguistic fraud
The Padanians' rise to consciousness will inevitably dissolve the by now
evidently artificial distinction between separate languages, "coordinated"
languages, and "Italian" dialects.
The Padanian linguistic area is clearly differentiated from that of the Italic
peninsula. According to distinguished scholars, the Romance languages (neo-Latin
dialects) are divided into two large groups: Western, including Gallo-Romance
and Iberic idioms; and Eastern, including Italia and Romanian.
The border between the these two groups can be represented by a line, or more
accurately, by a band which runs between the Ligurian Sea to the Adriatic, and
from Massa to Senigallia. The knowledge of this reality undoubtedly has a
significant impact on those who were exposed to the propaganda of the Italian
State. Knowledge of this reality is rigorously forbidden in Italian schools so
as to make people believe that our modes of speech are dialects of Italian. This
same propaganda is also projected in schools and universities abroad.
How is it possible for a mode of speech to be a regional variant of a language
if it does not even belong to that language group?
The denied Padanian identity re-emerges with strength
The litany used to oppose the rise to consciousness of the peoples of Padania is
by now predictable: "Padania does not exist, Padanian identity is
ridiculous."
Why then fear something which does not exist? Why is it necessary to keep
repeating it?
Evidently the paid personnel of this regime, including the journalists, do not
even render a satisfactory service to their paymasters because the more they
insist on this line, the more people come to know of the very reality which the
regime hastens to deny.
The reality is that Padanian identity is certainly not "folklore"
meant in the limiting and derisive sense which, not by chance, has been applied
to the term. Let's examine why.
The penetrating and persuasive strength of the Padanian identity cannot be
explained a priori as the reaction to the oppressive tax burden, the mafia,
uncontrolled immigration, the arrogant bureaucracy, the inefficiency of the
Italian State, the distortions of free competition, the rule-by-party system,
the systematic destruction of small and medium-sized businesses, etc. All of
these grave situations, even if considered together, do not allow for a
comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon. The reality is that we Padanians
identify Rome and the unitary Italian State as the carrier of all these threats
to the progress and stability of OUR life in civil society. And we have steadily
developed the awareness that the problem can only be solved by us alone. The
Italian State, the Italian rule-by-party/vote-pandering system is a beast
afflicted with incurable ills which thrives on forcibly and deceptively holding
together Peoples of different civic traditions. Attempts at reform from within
this system have proved to be pious illusions.
Chapter 4 Padania Today Inside the Italian State
The impotence of the Italian State against organized crime destroys
confidence and leads to civil decadence.
As a result of the transmission mechanism of the centralist Italian State,
Padania has been infected with the spread of big organized criminal groups which
are alien to its civic traditions. Though the mentality of the Padanian people
does not allow us to accept shake-down payments as an economic variable, giving
in to organized crime becomes inevitable when the evidence shows that the State
is unwilling and unable to do anything to eradicate the mafia-inspired culture
and leaves the citizens alone in the defense against mafia-style violence. When
the mafia reaches the point of assassinating judges who have done their duty,
only to have other judges release the criminals from prison, when released mafia
bosses order the murder of police officers who investigate mafia crimes, when,
despite bureaucratic anti-mafia procedures which bog down and offend honest
business people, public work contracts still wind up in mafia hands, it becomes
clear that there is no political will to defeat the mafia for the simple reason
that the Mafia is inside the State. Graver still is that the State cannot and
will not defend its own representatives who nonetheless attempt to combat the
mafia despite all the obstacles (purposefully) placed in their path incredibly
explained by a "lack of coordination" and by a perverted concept of
legal guarantees.
The Italian State bears the historic responsibility for the spread of organized crime in Padania. Freeing Padania means breaking the transmission mechanism which has infected it with the cancer of the Mafia. Failure to free Padania means not only the decay of our original culture and economy, but it also means the spread of the Mafia transmission mechanism throughout the European Union. Securing the freedom of Padania is our solemn moral duty.
The demographic collapse of Padania: a pre-announced catastrophe
Perhaps nothing more vividly illustrates Padania's urgent need to take its
destiny into its own hands than the drastic demographic changes which are about
to befall it.
There is a simple and fundamental truth which is rendered imperceptible by the
structure of the centralist Italian State together with purposeless materialism:
the negative rate of population growth in Padanian communities of both the
mountains and the plains has reached such a high level that the population will
be halved within a generation. Padania is steadily and rapidly becoming a
population of retirement-aged people without an adequate number of young people
to care for them materially and emotionally. In short, our people risk moving
down the path to extinction.
This situation is absolutely pathological for which there is no comparison
elsewhere in Western Europe. Countries like Great Britain, Norway, France, and
Sweden report an average of 13-14 births per year per one thousand inhabitants
while in Padania the rate has fallen to around 7 per thousand.
The fact is that today Padania remains an advanced society trapped inside a
State entity which does not allow it to manage its own problems arising from
industrial and post-industrial development, the first among which is the risk of
failing to adequately reproduce itself. But the very reality of this problem is
hidden by the Italian State. Padania's incredibly low birth rate hardly ever
appears in official statistics. It is almost always shown as an average which
includes South Italy's naturally much higher rate of birth. We all know that
today's family relief checks are a joke, while Padania's resources are
systematically siphoned off.
In any case, it seems that the ruling classes want it this way. Among other
things, based on current demographic trends and institutional arrangements,
within twenty years South Italy will send dozens more representatives to the
Italian Parliament at the expense of Padania in a zero-sum game. At that point,
the political representation of Padania in Rome will become a mere nuisance for
the Italian State. Therefore, it is imperative that Padania break out of this
system before it is too late.
Non-European immigration
Padania is not protected from the impact of massive non-European immigration
which not only is often a painful experience for the immigrants themselves and
causes serious problems of public order, it also endangers the identity of our
Peoples.
It is estimated that within a few years, the Maghreb countries alone will have
to create 3 million new jobs per year. Even the most enthusiastic
pro-immigration policy-makers realize that Europe will never be able to create
enough new jobs to relieve the pressures of the growing populations of North
Africa. The point is that a People have the human right not to be invaded by
other Peoples, this risking to become foreigners in their own land.
The pressures of unemployment and the demoralization of living under the
authoritarian regimes which govern many Third World countries explain why many
young people attempt the adventure of emigrating. Very often, people do not
emigrate to learn a trade, to save up a nest-egg and return home; they emigrate
for a more general desire to live better, to stay in what appears from afar -
perhaps through some television show - as a kind of paradise where there is
wealth for everyone without having to work for it and where it seems that
anything goes.
Beyond the rhetoric and the daily brainwashing perpetrated by the Italian mass
media, citizens of all ideological leanings are becoming aware of the open
exploitation of immigration on the part of politicians, organized criminal
groups, and the Unions who stand ready to manipulate the immigrants to their own
advantage in complete disregard for the common good.
The orphans of Marxism are among the most fervent supporters of an immigration
policy without limits, of immediate granting of all kinds of welfare rights to
the new arrivals. From their point of view, there are evidently many advantages
to this transaction. Through the building of a "fifth column", the
formation of a new proletariat, these political groups permanently gain
consensus based on the very ethnic factors which they pretend to deny.
Justified by the "need for labor", unplanned immigration incompatible
with the criteria of comparative advantage only aggravates the already chronic
problem of structural unemployment, giving rise to frustrations and hatred,
however misplaced they may be. Examples are provided by the frequent explosions
of violence which occur in nearby cities such as Paris, Brussels, and Marseilles.
By what design are the ruling classes of the Italian State favoring an
immigration policy which may lead to the most terrible forms of conflict?
Discrimination and exploitation
From the Declaration of Independence of Padania proclaimed at Venice on 15
September 1996:
"The Italian State has systematically annihilated every form of
autonomy and self-government of our Towns, our Provinces, and our Regions;
The Italian State has deceptively forced the Peoples of Padania to be subjected
to systematic exploitation of their economic and financial resources, built up
through years of tireless daily work, to squander them on devastating welfarism,
the vote-pandering system, and mafia-style corruption in the South;
The Italian State has deliberately attempted to suppress the languages and the
cultural identities of the Peoples of Padania through the colonization of the
public education system."
We trust that all persons of good will who have had first-hand experience
with the Italian State can confirm the truth of the foregoing declaration.
The de facto exclusion of Padanians from public administration and decades of
racketeering have alienated Padanian citizens from an Italian State which can no
longer fulfill its mission as guarantor of the common interest. The Italian
State is perceived as something which does not pertain to us.
Chapter 5 Padania Towards a Europe of the Peoples and of the Regions
What kind of European integration will develop?
A no less pressing need is developing in Europe for a system of regulations for
governing fundamental economic and environmental choices allowing people to feel
closer to the political institutions which more accurately reflect their spheres
of identity. At the same time, such a system must be robust enough to meet the
challenges of preparing local and European-wide economies for the increasingly
interdependent and competitive global marketplace.
Therefore, European integration is not, and should not be, only a response to
the recognized inadequacies of the traditional forms of sovereignty of small and
medium-sized States concentrated in one of the most developed parts of the
world. It also represents the natural environment in which to give a greater
voice to the values and rights of European populations. Integration means
seeking out all that is shared in common and appreciating all that is specific.
From the Mediterranean to the North Sea, Nations without a State, quasi-Nations,
and regional groupings recognize this historical opportunity.
The response to these needs is a Europe of the Peoples, of the regional
communities, and of the local communities. It is the only Europe in which the
citizens can experience a democracy based on the consensus of the governed and
an authority which is exercised with respect for individuals and groups. It is
the only Europe which can deliver us from the sad destiny of becoming hapless
subjects as a result of a mere transfer of power from the bureaucratic State
capitals to the super-bureaucratic institutions of Brussels.
With the weakness of the would-be Nation-States, historical regions and
ethnic nationalities emerge
Historical regions, religious groups, and linguistic groups which have been part
of single would-be nation-States, in some cases, for centuries (for example, in
France and in Spain), and which centralist authoritarianism succeeded in
repressing only superficially, are re-emerging. Padania's demands for autonomy
confirm once again that our Peoples are the forerunners of fundamental movements
in the most advanced parts of Europe. In spite of what the State-owned Italian
mass media would like to make people believe, "localism" is not a sign
of backwardness. On the contrary, the evolution and forward development of our
movement is unstoppable. It is a European-wide phenomenon which the retarded and
provincial Italian State, culturally and economically mired in the backwaters of
Europe, cannot and wishes not to see for evident reasons of self-interest.
Many Western ethnic and regional communities demand recognition of autonomy
within a framework of regional or federalist institutions, or else greater
autonomy than is currently attainable, or even independence from their
respective present-day States. The different demands ranging from full
sovereignty to basic cultural autonomy correspond to the level of self-awareness
and identity achieved up till now by the respective groups. Consequentially, it
is difficult to classify this movement into a single category. However, in its
entirety, it reflects a need to re-affirm feelings of belonging common to all
advanced industrial societies of Western civilization.
Padania, therefore, envisions a Europe of the Regions and of the Peoples; a
Europe much different from the present one which, in many respects, is the
result of compromises between States and international lobbies. This is why the
Padanian movement can be the beginning of a general European transformation.
Padania in a straight-jacket
Though Padania's per-capita Gross Domestic Product is one of the highest in the
Europe Union, despite its economic strength, as a result of the ruinous
intermediation of the Italian State:
- Padania risks being excluded from European Monetary Union and, as a
consequence, from the inner circle of European integration. In this way, it will
be kept away from an area to which it belongs historically, economically, and
culturally;
- our local governments are systematically deprived of the resources necessary
to solve local territorial problems, both in the big cities and in the
mountain-valley towns, concerning such issues as environmental protection and
the development of transportation infrastructure, while our health care system
and our schools fall short of European standards;
- the well-being of our future generations has been jeopardized by a national
debt, accumulated by the Italian State, totaling more than 120% of Italy's GDP,
to finance profligate spending on political patronage.
Why does this situation exist? Why do we have to be subjected to this
discrimination? Why do we have to be made to feel alienated? Because Padania is
not yet today a political entity. Because Padania is rigidly confined inside the
centralist Italian State.
What does Padania Want ?
PADANIA WANTS TO BE FREE
Free from the oppression of Roman-style centralism. Free from the cancer
of the Mafia.
Free to manage its own problems. Free to remain part of Europe. Free to compete
in international markets. Free to assist in the growth of peoples with less
developed economies. Free to preserve and promote its own cultural identities.
Free to be itself!